Saga Watching the Star Wars Saga Eps I-VI for the first time

I've long favoured 4,5,1,2,3,6 as a viewing order for myself. I favour 4, 5, go to bed more, but that's another story. I'm not sure if 'flashback order' is the order I'd choose for a new viewer though, particularly not a young one. Maybe 1-6 is the way to go for them.

 

I've been watching the entire saga with additions:

Emissaries to Malastare comic
The Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
Clone Wars movie & various episodes
Various Clone Wars comics
A New Hope
The Empire Strikes Back
Shadows of the Empire
Return of the Jedi
Dark Empire
Dark Empire II
Empire's End

Here's what I have learned:

- Although the two trilogies match up and mirror each other in so many major and minor ways, they do not fit together particularly well as one saga. I believe the best order is probably to watch the originals and then the prequels.

- The Clone Wars adds so much great stuff to Anakin's turn to the Dark Side; but again, it doesn't fit into the saga viewed in order. So original trilogy, prequels, then Clone Wars is the way to watch the whole thing.

- Emissaries to Malastare is awful, and indicates how boring most Phantom Menace spin-offs are.

- Shadows of the Empire fits in very nicely and doesn't add anything major which RotJ doesn't acknowledge. It also shows the origins of several RotJ elements, such as Leia's bounty hunter disguise and Luke's increasing powers. The problem with this approach though is that nothing interesting happens. Shadows of the Empire is entirely disposable.

- Dark Empire follows RotJ very well, especially in tone; it takes the Luke/Vader/Palpatine scenes and runs with them to come up with the most logical and satisfying 'what happened next?' of any EU post-RotJ stories.

- Attack of the Clones, previously my least favourite movie, was actually more enjoyable this time than my favourite prequel, Revenge of the Sith. RotS seems to race through to get everything done and in place for A New Hope, whereas AotC has time to tell it's own story.

- Yoda is very, very different in the two trilogies.

- The John Ostrander/Jan Duursema comics are far and away the most successful spin-off material in terms of recreating the look and feel of the movies.

- Paplatine's make-up in RotS is somehow worse than it was twenty years earlier in RotJ, but I'm impressed by Ian McDiarmid's ability to play him almost exactly the same all those years later (although he does go a bit over the top on occasion).

- Another way to look at the saga is one of manipulation; Palpatine manipulates almost every single major character throughout the six episodes, and then at the end, the one he has manipulated most destroys him.

 

In addition, RotJ definitely has a feeling of, 'let's get this over with.'

Harrison Ford was great in the previous two movies, in RotJ he has nothing to do except mug. Completely neutered and wasted.

At the same time, seeing Hayden as Anakin at the end of RotJ is probably the most effective attempt to tie the two trilogies together - it does actually work on watching the whole saga as one. I hated it when it was originally done, but I appreciated it this time.

 

Well, I've watched the Saga I-VI in one sitting and it actually flows really well. The tragedy of Darth Vader is the most important reason and in my opinion, that character is perfectly portrayed. I just can't see Anakin and Vader as separate people since I first did this. Vader is the horrifying result of what he went through in ROTS, his appearance a painful reminder of his failure, how he let everyone, including himself, down. Seeing his story in order makes it all so clear. In my eyes, Vader is an extremely tragic figure. He's just a fragment of the man he used to be - and more importantly, who he could've been.
That's my greatest gain from viewing I-VI and I highly recommend it.

 

The whole 'tragedy of Darth Vader' thing is something Lucas came up with for the prequels. The original Star Wars trilogy is about Luke, not Vader.

 

I don't see how that's relevant, as it has no bearing on the movie experience.

EDIT: I see how you may have misinterpreted my post, so I edited it for clarity.

 

It has no bearing on the movie experience. The movie experience has an impact on it though, for me at least.

 

Okay, well thanks for doing that.

But Vader is portrayed fundamentally and unavoidably differently in the two trilogies. When he appears in A New Hope, he's just the scary villain, and that's how the film portrays him - not as a tragic downfallen hero. Vader's character, and the Star Wars saga as a whole, changed as every movie was made, and you can see that by watching them all in order.

 

By watching them in order, I see what I described above. Anakin's trilogy puts Luke's trilogy in a different light, especially when it comes to Vader. He used to be a badass, but now, he's mostly tragic (but also badass). I actually find him scarier now, since I know his history and see him as an unstable wreck of a man.

 

Yes, but he's not intentionally tragic in the original trilogy, he's only tragic because the prequels tell us he was.

David Prowse isn't acting tragic. James Earl Jones isn't voicing him tragic. George Lucas isn't directing or writing him as a tragic figure. He only did that when he made Revenge of the Sith.

That's the disconnection between the two trilogies. The story and characters changed.

 

Thank you!!! I was shaking my head reading this thread, and then you beat me to what I was going to say. Making SW "the tragedy of Darth Vader" and pretending it was always intended to be that way, is one of the biggest BS maneuvers Lucas has tried to pull on us. If this was true, then why was the original subheading of the original SW film: "The Adventures of Luke Skywalker"? Come on, it was meant to be *Luke*'s story. He just retconned it so….I don't know why. So maybe we'd be more likely to accept the prequels? I'm not sure. But I never bought it. And I'm more than happy that with the ST, we might rightfully get the focus back on Luke.

As for watching the movies for the first time, I'd go: IV-VI, then strongly advise against watching I and II at all (they really aren't important to the story. Just filler, IMO), then put in III. Or, IV, V, III, VI is interesting too. You get the big "I am your father" reveal, skip back in time to the meat of the prequels that explains it all, then move on to ROTJ.

 

Have to agree with this. Luke, Han and Leia are my basis for SW. Not Anakin, Padme and Obi-Wan. Not apologizing for that either. The prequels are set up for Luke and company and how things came to be for the OT.

 

He's been a tragic character since The Empire Strikes Back. And the six episode saga has been about him ever since ESB first came out and had the subtitle Episode V.

There was really only one movie where he was nothing more than a badass villain, and that's Episode IV. Last I checked, there were two more movies after that one in the original trilogy.

So if you want to avoid watching the saga in a way that presents itself as being the Tragedy of Darth Vader, I suggest you watch it in this order: IV. Full stop.

I and II are only filler if you don't care about Anakin's reasons for turning to the dark side, or the circumstances that led to a democratic republic willingly transforming itself into an autocratic empire.

Sure, you could probably fill in the blanks based on context if you really wanted to. But you can do that with any movie in the saga. Using that logic, there's no reason to watch any movie other than RotJ. I-V are just filler.

 

IV full stop is actually a pretty good order.

I've long seen the saga as two series. ANH and TESB being one and the rest being the other. I am your father is where one story starts and the other ends. It's also when Vader's character changes from badass villain to tragic protagonist.

 

Well, in a sense, you're right. Right up until that moment in TESB, Star Wars was pretty much nothing more than your traditional coming-of-age, beat-up-the-bad-guys-and-kill-the-villain action adventure story, with some vague mysticism thrown in for flavor. I think that's selling Star Wars very short, though. I honestly wouldn't be able to understand the viewpoint of someone who thought the series crapped the bed the moment Vader was made sympathetic. Star Wars, like it or not, has more or less been defined by Vader's character arc ever since that moment.

 

At what point, if at all, SW developed toileting issues is a matter of opinion. But that's beside the point that I'm making, which is that up until, at the earliest, the father revelation, the OT in no way resembles the story of the tragedy of Darth Vader and he's not a sympathetic character.

 

Maybe cos we're waiting for the big surprise

 

Of course it wasn't intentional at the time, nobody denys that (I know Lucas was selling that idea at the time of the release of ROTS, but that was more of a marketing thing that anything else). It just doesn't matter and it's kind of ironic that some of the same people who otherwise claim the maker's intentions were irrelevant ("I don't care what Lucas thought." etc.) are so bound on Lucas's "intention" in this case....never mind.

Apart from that, I don't see how one can watch ROTJ and not see a tragic element about the character of Darth Vader. Even if you ignore the prequels, it is there. You see that pathetic wreck called Vader, directly compared to the balanced Jedi Knight that his son has become.

That aspect was only highlighted by TPM, AOTC and ROTS. That's kind of the point of new chapters in an existing series, especially when it's about prequels, to change the focus of the earlier films. Just filling the gaps, with no new ideas or changes of perception is boring, really, at least to my understanding.

In spite of some (mis)conception, the Prequels aren't simply a sort of prehistory or background story to the Originals. They are an equal part of the story, instead. What happens to the Trade Federation ist just as important as what happens to Jabba the Hutt. What goes on with the character of Han Solo is just as important as what goes on with the character of Padmé. Padmé's not just "the mother of Luke and Leia" (that's what she'd be in a background story), she's an independent character with her own story. TPM can't be "filler" simply for that reason.

So yes: Star Wars started out as the "Adventures of Luke Skywalker", it turned into the "Tragedy of Darth Vader" and might now turn into the "Story of Generations" or whatever it will be. They are just all equal in the end. The PT was not supposed to simply fill the gaps as the ST is not supposed to reduce itself to "OT matters" (I'm not sure with a certain fanboy at the helm here, unfortunately).

Basically, it's all up to the viewer, but I don't understand how someone can deny others seeing/experiencing Episodes I - VI in chronological order as the "Tragedy of Darth Vader". It's an absolutely legitimate view, regardless of the maker's ever-changing intentions.

 

The way I see the Star Wars saga is two Heroes Journeys: the first one fails and the hero ends up a villain, the second one succeeds and the hero redeems the villain. The prequels are about Anakin, the original trilogy is about Luke.

 

Exactly I mean that whole conversation Luke and Vader have before meeting the emperor screams tragedy right there. As Luke says there's conflict right there and Prowse and Jones were able to show that

 

Well yes, but one doesn't eliminate the other, does it? The individual films also offer individual stories, yet they are also connected forming another story. Ultimately, there are multiple stories layered above each other. It's a rather complex building.
The PT, in itself, is about Anakin, right. The OT, in itself, is about Luke, right. I - VI is about Anakin/Vader, I'd say. IV - III is ... I don't know ... chaotic (?) ... at least not an identifiable story, imo . More like fragments of a virtual story (you can still flawlessly watch it in this order without difficulty, though) .

 

I agree with everything you say, more or less. However, I believe IV-III is the way to watch it as the films were made assuming the audience had seen the previous ones (lightsabers and Jedi are explained in IV, not I. etc). So although strictly speaking the story is I-VI, the narrative of IV-III works as telling us Luke's story/the rebellion defeating the empire, and then how it came to be that way in the first place. In addition, the order of release means every film gets more expensive, ambitious and spectacular - it's just bizarre going from the CGI Jedi acrobatics of Episode III to David Prowse and Alec Guinness fencing.

And finally, I really enjoy the symbolism of the end of Episode III, the series ending where it began - in the middle.

 

As to the argument about Episode 1 being "filler" to the entire saga, I actually do kinda agree with it because it's barely about Anakin. He is absolutely a secondary character in that film. You could call it "Qui-Gon's Big Adventure" because I think it's fairly debatable that the main character of Phantom Menace is Qui-Gon Jinn. Which is what makes his death so much more surprising, well, it would be surprising if we weren't Star Wars nerds who knew how the story played out. But, for a newbie, it would be rather shocking, because after Qui-Gon dies the secondary characters (Anakin and Obi-Wan) have to pick up the narrative slack of the series.

Now, I'm not saying that since Episode 1 is not about the Skywalkers, that makes it bad, it's an interesting visit to the Star Wars universe and has a ton of great stuff in it, but if you view The Saga as being about the Skywalkers, I think you could skip Ep. 1, easily (but you'd be missing out on some gold, it's a very well made flick and does a good job of layering in things that plays out over subsequent movies.)

Episode II, however, I think is an essential piece in Anakin's fall and the Skywalker saga as a whole.

 

Episode 1 should have been Episode 0.

This. This is the way we saw the Saga evolve. Feels more natural this way.

 

Well, it seems like a bit of a cheat to discount almost the entirety of TESB as being part of the "tragedy" storyline, simply because the revelation itself happens towards the end of the movie. The movie is designed so that the reveal at the end will make you look back at all the things that happened earlier and re-contextualize them. So I will stand by my assessment that the saga became the "tragedy of Darth Vader" from the very start of Episode V. When Vader acts like a villainous bad ass in the early scenes of that movie, the filmmakers did it with full knowledge that those scenes would inform the audience's reaction when the truth is revealed at the end. Every word spoken by Yoda about the lure of the dark side and its tendency to dominate one's destiny is in the movie specifically as foreshadowing for Luke's quest to redeem his father. The entire "Luke" portion of the movie is about Vader-as-Anakin, from start to finish.

And so the only point you're making is that Episode IV, alone, in no way resembled the story of the tragedy of Darth Vader (at least not originally). Which is uncontroversial. But it's only the first movie. And if you watch the movies I-VI, it actually fits into the tragedy quite well. Which is unsurprising, because every other movie after it was designed to accommodate Episode IV and bring it in line with the new story line.

So I don't really understand what this even has to do with "proper" viewing order. Every movie but one was designed as part of a six-part, chronological saga; and the only one that wasn't was retroactively made to fit anyway.